Lawless Town: A Western Duo

by Lewis B. Patten

“Death of a Gunfighter” finds Walt Street on a stagecoach bound for Escalante, Colorado, where he hopes to reunite with his wife after two years of living without violence at her request. When fellow passenger Ben Rawlins recognizes him as a man with a bounty on his head, a struggle ensues and Rawlins ends up dead. Walt switches identities and all is well until he finds out that Rawlins has inherited a small ranch that the neighboring Gunhammer Ranch wants. He can’t sell because he’s not Rawlins, but the Gunhammer crew thinks he just needs some strong-armed persuasion.

Genres: Westerns

302 pages, Library Binding

First published April 1, 2015

About the author

aka Lewis Ford, Len Leighton, Joseph Wayne (with Wayne D. Overholser)

Lewis Byford Patten was a prolific author of American Western Novels, born in Denver, Colorado. Often published under the names Lewis Ford, Len Leighto and, Joseph Wayne.

Reviews

[James Frenkz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't had much time to read so I figured something light and easy like a generic serial western would be easy to get through, and it was, but that's about the only real praise I can sing for these two stories. Patten wrote a shitton of westerns, and after a while I have to imagine that when you have around 150 books in the same genre to your name that you wind up getting lazy after a while, which was moreso apparent in Lawless town and less so in the first story. While Street's struggle to avoid violence while facing off against heinous men who want him dead is a fairly standard Western setup, I find that sort of story more inherently compelling than generic lawman bringing a taste of justice and order to a town absent of both.

While Street's story has a cathartic explosion of justified violence at the end (though admittedly the action was sometimes confusing. I still can't remember who was shooting at who exactly in certain parts of the story) Lawless Town opens with gunfights and pretty much has nowhere to go from that point on.

I also found the contrivance and truncated nature of certain plot elements in both stories pretty silly. Street's wife, who served as the whole reason he was trying to avoid killing in the first place, gets gunned down in the final battle THAT HE CAUSED and he pretty much just shrugs it off and goes "Welp, I got some new pussy now anyway and she seems more loyal than her so whatever." Which, much as I'd hate to sound like a bleeding heart, is hilariously fucked up. And Lawless Town can't quite find a reason for the protagonist to want to do a job that will probably get him murdered so the little girl that gets murdered just so happens to be the daughter of a woman who he'd loved before the war who just so happens to live in this random 'lawless' town and who just so happens to be his biological daughter they had without his knowledge because after boinking one night while he as on leave she ran off right after.

Anyway, neither issues were big enough to really get me to stop reading but I wouldn't go out of my way to acquire these if I had to spend money on them.

[Steven Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read. Would have been great 1950 B- westerns.